Amazingly Average (Hotel Concha Dorada (Veracruz, Mexico))

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Hotel Concha Dorada (Veracruz, Mexico)
Date:	28/04/09 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Central location

Disadvantages: A very basic hotel

In Veracruz a few weeks ago, I chose to stay in a cheap, central hotel the first night, and a less-central, resort style hotel the second. This was my first hotel and it met the criteria immediately since it was located overlooking the central square, and cost £26 including taxes, which seemed reasonable for a private, ensuite room.

I found the hotel easily enough, having asked the taxi driver to drop me at the central plaza. The square is large and has the cathedral at one side, government buildings at the back, and a bandstand in the middle. The hotel was indeed on this square, but tucked away slightly in one corner, making it quieter for those lucky people whose windows faced this way. As I was soon to discover, I was not one of those people.

I had arrived early so asked if I could drop off my small rucksack as I went to find lunch. The woman seemed confused by this and had to go and check. I think perhaps because she didn't understand that I was to be a guest at the hotel that night. I like to think it was due to my dubious Spanish rather than a distinct lack of customer service, but since my Spanish is no longer all that dubious...

I returned after 3pm and got my key easily. I had to fill in the standard card to register, but they had confirmation of my booking (via GTA hotels) and did not want a copy of the voucher I had duly printed as instructed. My room was on the 3rd floor, so I took the small, rickety lift up. I found my room easily, but was slightly bemused by the layout of the corridors since the hotel was a terrace, and yet the rooms seemed to go back into its depths rather than across the front. Basically, I was wondering if the architect of this place had heard about a little thing us normal people call windows.

First impressions of my room were good. It was small, but clean, and had a nice big bed and a nice big TV. There was even a window, though the curtains were drawn. I ran (ok, took one step, taking me from one side of the room to the other) to open them, only to find my window overlooked a rather plain wall, which blocked all natural light. I shut the curtains since it made the room feel nicer, and went to explore the ensuite.

This was the biggest let down in the room, as it was quite frankly ewww. Though it had everything you would expect (sink, toilet, shower, even a small window), it was tiny and grotty. It was more a wet room than a shower room, as the only thing protecting the towels and toilet and little basket of cheap soaps from the spray of the water was a tatty shower curtain on one of those semi circular rails, cornering off part of the bathroom. The water drained (slowly) through a grate in the floor, but essentially the bottom 2 inches of the room filled with water as I showered and remained that way for a good 5 minutes. The water pressure was ok, but not wonderful, and the water temperature was ok but not wonderful. The overall shower space however was very small, and I found it hard to turn round, or stick my leg up on the wall to shave as I normally do before a day at the beach. I'm neither tall nor wide, so your average sized person would have even more difficulty bathing in these conditions. Speaking of those soaps, they were Rosa Venus branded. I didn't learn this until a few weeks later, during some speaking tests with one of my advanced classes, but Rosa Venus soap is typically associated with the type of hotel that charges by the hour, leaving me little doubt that the Concha Dorada was on the bottom end of the hotel scale.

That night I decided to watch TV, but this proved tricky due to the lack of decent channels. I had maybe 10, which is a very small number for Mexico, and the 10 I had were not worth watching. Instead, I turned on the ceiling fan and debated re-enacting a certain scene from Series 5 Greys Anatomy, which most of you lucky people in the UK still have to look forward to. The bed proved to be reasonably comfy, but the sheets were thin and scratchy, and the pillows lumpy. I awoke looking forward to moving to my second hotel that night.

The hotel has a restaurant though really this is a cafe on the ground floor, mainly outdoors, which is open to the public and offers no particular benefits to residents. The hotel does offer room service though, which seemed wildly out of balance, as if someone had started reading a "How to run a hotel" book half way through, skipping the chapters on nice, sensibly sized bathrooms and windows to the outside and so on. The restaurant did not appeal to me, in neither its menu (mainly fish at night, eggs for breakfast) nor its design (plastic patio furniture) so although it was cheap, I went elsewhere. It also did not open early enough for me - by 8.30am (an hour after I'd really wanted breakfast) it was still dead so I ended up at Sanborns which had been bustling for a good hour.

The hotel is not a terrible place. It provided safe, clean and quiet budget rooms. It is centrally located for the promenade, the bus and harbour tours, the Aquarium, the downtown shops and many restaurants. The rooms have the necessities (including air con) and a few extras (like free bottled water). Plus, the hotel has a Mexican feel to it, unlike a sterile, international chain (NB I LOVE sterile international chains). I wouldn't want to stay there again, or to have stayed for more than one night, but as basic, budget hotels in Mexico go, it wasn't all that bad.

Their official website is very annoying (too much 'design', too many bits to click on) and available only in Spanish, but it does make the hotel look a lot nicer than it actually is, if that helps.

http://www.hotelconchadorada.com/


The hotel is located in Veracruz city in Veracruz state, a decent distance (some 200 miles) from Mexico City, so let's keep the Swine Flu comments to a minimum, ok?

Summary: Not bad for the money, but not too good either